External lights for aircrafts can be used e.g. as anti-collision lights, beacon lights or position lights. Other external aircraft lights include e.g. landing lights, taxi lights and runway turn-off lights. For years already, the use of LEDs as light sources for aircraft lights is known. In particular, high intensity LEDs are used with a plurality of these LEDs being arranged in an aircraft light. The operation of the LEDs results in heat energy losses which can degrade and in the worst case destroy the LEDs. Accordingly, the LEDs of aircraft lights are cooled.
In the prior art, diverse active and passive cooling concepts do exist. For example, according to US-A-2007/0164875, an LED aircraft anti-collision beacon light is cooled using the airstream flowing around the light when the aircraft is in flight. In other known lights, Venturi tubes are used so as to create a Venturi effect and, based on that, air movement. Examples of this type of cooling concept in lights are disclosed e.g. in US-A-2009/0073689, DE-A-10 2009 019 226, and DE-A-10 2006 057 553.
Finally, from U.S. Pat. No. 7,828,465 and WO-A-2008/137732, LED-based fixtures are known in which the LEDs are cooled by using a chimney effect. Other lights using the chimney effect for creating cooling air movement are disclosed in US-A-2007/0070630, US-A-2006/0262544, and US-A-2005/0111234.